His Name

And this is the name by
which he will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”

Jeremiah 23:6

Throughout the Bible, a name had great significance, much more than in our western culture. God also revealed Himself through different names. For example, to Moses He said: “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name LORD [Jehovah] I did not make myself known to them” (Ex. 6:3). Moses received an additional revelation of who God is through one of His names.

Today, we have another one of God’s revealed names: “The LORD is our righteousness.” He has revealed Himself as such. While in the Old Testament the significance of that name may not have been as obvious, in the New Testament it’s a major theme.

When we consider Jesus as our righteousness, we normally do so from a positional perspective. Though His righteous life and sacrificial death, we have been justified. That means that we have been declared righteous because His righteous life has been freely deposited in our account.

That’s only one side of the coin, though. Jesus is also our practical righteousness. The best and easiest way to understand this is His illustration of the vine and the branch: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Jesus is the immediate cause of all our right thinking, feeling, speaking, and doing: “All my springs are in you” (Ps. 87:7).